Socio-cultural Environment as Impetus for Art: Adapting Fish Forms for Mask Production

Abstract

From primordial times, it has been natural for artists to adapt forms and subjects common in their natural environment
or cultural spaces. However, literature indicates that contemporary artists in Nigeria no longer produce art inspired by and
adapted from parameters inherent to Africa. Rather, they now produce what is referred to as ‘airport art’, which is shallow, kitsch
and dictated by (and directed at) global but western art patrons. Against this backdrop, this study sort to find out whether, as it
was in the production of African arts in pre-colonial times, it is possible that the same inspiring process of adapting elements
from African environments can take place among visual artists today. Taking an abundant and naturally occurring subject like
fish, the study uses masks adapted and made from skeletal properties of fish to interrogate the core issues. The study suggests
that, by propagating foreign content and contexts of art production and abandoning inherent social and cultural capacities of
Africa in producing African art, we continually lose the ‘Africaness’ in the continent’s art, until nothing is left eventually.